Episode 69: Podcast Therapy

This week’s prompts: Turquoise, 110, Watermark

Neal and Lauren fight through Thanksgiving-week chaos, closet recording, AirPods audio, and a brutal Zoom delay to bring you an episode that accidentally turns into group therapy — in the best way.

Lauren takes “turquoise” straight to the American Southwest by way of Wisconsin with a rich, nuanced dive into the life and work of Georgia O’Keeffe. From her early training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League, to her complicated relationship with photographer and champion Alfred Stieglitz, Lauren traces how O’Keeffe moved from charcoal abstraction to monumental flowers, New York skyscrapers, and the bone-and-desert landscapes of Ghost Ranch. Along the way, she busts the “vagina flower” myth, talks about O’Keeffe’s resistance to being labeled a “woman artist,” and explains why the artist’s prickly independence still makes her feel so modern — even as her paintings disappear into private collections.

Meanwhile, Neal grabs the “110” prompt and goes full pressure-cooker with Falling Down (1993), Joel Schumacher’s tense, divisive portrait of a man who absolutely should have gone to therapy instead of terrorizing Los Angeles. He walks us through Michael Douglas’s infamous D-FENS — short-sleeve shirt, flat-top, briefcase, and all — and the film’s odyssey structure, from the overpriced soda in the corner store to the legendary Whammy Burger breakfast meltdown and a horrifying detour through a neo-Nazi surplus shop. Neal digs into the film’s early-’90s LA context, its connection to American rage, economic anxiety, and white male grievance, and why the final “I’m the bad guy?” moment still hits uncomfortably hard.

Then, in true Podcast Therapy fashion, the conversation swerves into real talk: male loneliness, the thin line between anger and sadness, revenge as a brain addiction, and why misery might be more contagious than we think. Lauren breaks down anger and grief as “roommates,” Neal brings in a book about the neuroscience of revenge, and together they make a compelling case that a lot of what we call “snapping” is really untreated sadness… plus a broken air conditioner.

PLUS:
💐 Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers, bones, and “witch of the Southwest” era
🏜️ Ghost Ranch, feminist iconography, and why she hated everyone’s interpretations
🚗 Road rage, the 110, and the early-’90s LA anxiety baked into Falling Down
🍔 The Whammy Burger scene and the fantasy of yelling “this doesn’t look like the picture!”
🧠 Anger vs. sadness, revenge circuitry, and why men will literally shoot up Los Angeles instead of going to therapy

Next week’s prompts: 1717, Arena, Titian Red

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